There are a myriad of different formats by which individuals communicate electronically in non real-time or quasi real-time. The targeted recipient of the message can be another individual (i.e. peer-to-peer), a group of individuals (i.e. peer-to-many) or the public at large (i.e. a broadcast).
One such peer-to-peer format is voicemail, which is a computer based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages, select and deliver voice information and process transactions relating to individuals, organizations, products and services using an ordinary telephone. The term voicemail can also more broadly denote any system of conveying stored telecommunications as voice messages, including using an answering machine. Most cell phone services offer voicemail as a basic feature, and many land line phones and corporate private branch exchanges (PBXs) include voicemail services.
Electronic mail, commonly called email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients (peer-to-peer or peer-to-many). Modem email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Current email systems are typically implemented based on a store-and-forward model. Email servers accept, forward, deliver and store messages. The computers of neither the author nor the recipient(s) are required to be online simultaneously. Rather, they need only connect briefly to a network coupled typically to an email server, for as long as it takes to send or receive the email messages. Email messages are often conveyed using text, with attachments that can be other documents, pictures or video.
Text messaging is one of the most widely used telecommunications applications in the world. The SMS (Short Message Service) service component of phone, web or mobile communication systems employs standardized communication protocols to allow the exchange of short text messages (i.e. up to 160 characters) between fixed line or mobile phone devices. Most SMS messages are mobile-to-mobile text messages though the standard supports other types of broadcast messaging as well. An extension of the core SMS (Short Message Service) is the MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service). This standard format permits text messages to and from mobile devices to include multimedia content (e.g. images, video and audio) in addition to the text content of the message. Text messages can also be employed by individuals to interact with automated systems to order products and services directly from their mobile phones or to participate in surveys, contests and the like. Advertisers and service providers use texts to notify mobile phone users about promotions, payment due dates and other subject matter which has heretofore been sent by post, e-mail or voicemail.
Examples of currently popular broadcast messaging formats include webcasts, screencasts and podcasts. A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, webcasting is “broadcasting” over the Internet. A screencast is a digital recording of a computer screen output, also sometimes referred to as video screen capture. Screencasts are similar to screenshots, but a screenshot is a picture of a computer screen and its content, whereas a screencast is essentially a movie of the changes in display content over time that a user sees on a computer screen. Screencasts are often enhanced with audio narration making reference to the changes in display content.
A podcast (or non-streamed webcast) is a series of digital media files (either audio or video) each being released episodically. A podcast is often downloaded through web syndication. The mode of delivery differentiates podcasting from other means of accessing media files over the Internet, such as direct download or streamed webcasting. For a podcast, list of all the audio or video files currently associated with a given series is maintained centrally on the distributor's server as a web feed. The listener or viewer typically employs special client application software known as a pod-catcher that can access this web feed, check it for updates and download any new files in the series. This process can be automated so that new files are downloaded automatically. Files are stored locally on the user's computer or other device and they remain ready for offline use. The user therefore provided with simple access to episodic content whenever convenient.
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text and metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. RSS feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. RSS feeds benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.
RSS feeds can be read using software typically referred to as an RSS reader, feed reader or aggregator. Such programs can be web-based, desktop-based or mobile-device-based. The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed's URI, or by clicking a feed icon in a web browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds. RSS allows users to avoid manually inspecting all of the websites they are interested in. Rather, they simply subscribe to websites and all new content added to the website is pushed onto the subscriber's browser when it becomes available.
Another form of electronic communication that has recently exploded in popularity is the use of social media networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr and the like. Such sites enable users to post text, pictures and video and permits communication as an interactive dialogue between an individual and numerous friends and subscribers. Social media can take on many different forms, including Internet forums, web-blogs, social blogs, micro-blogging, wilds, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. Such activities are facilitated by by technologies including blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowd-sourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms.
As outlined above, there are a variety of methods by which to communicate electronically, but in every one of them, the various media elements and accompanying user-interaction events are at the very least, very loosely coupled, and in some formats there is lack of any form of correlation whatsoever. While a video inherently couples visual elements with audio contained therein, and can be sent to others by email, or made available to the public when uploaded to Youtube, the equipment and software required to compose a video with user interaction however, is fairly elaborate and expensive, and often beyond the capabilities of the typical user.
In addition, while video might be reasonable to broadcast, it is not the best format when applied to a peer-to-peer mode of communication. First, because videos are very data intensive, they must be compressed to minimize their impact on communication channel bandwidth. There are a number of video compression encoding standards in use, and this means a recipient must have the right decoder to ensure that they can consume it. This renders communication using video between individuals difficult if they have different devices that are not compatible with one another. Moreover, resources are required to encode the video which must be done either on the client or the server when uploaded. Finally, the various media elements of a video (e.g. audio, visual backgrounds, and user interaction events) are flattened into a single object (the video itself). Thus, when video resolution is minimized to decrease costs and increase speed of upload, the various other media elements of the video are not available to the recipient at full resolution for purposes of collaboration or re-editing.
There have been some attempts in the recent past to combine various media elements, including audio, visual media such as video and images, and user interactions such as sketching, to provide more correlation between the elements in less flattened format. Such attempts have been geared more towards facilitating real-time collaboration between individuals working on large schematic documents. These types of products, however, tend to be sketch-centric products in which limited user interactive events such as sketching are used the correlating medium. Put another way, these products create a time-line that is based on sketching activity generated during creation of a message for purposes of collaborative editing of documents, which is not ideal for purposes of creating multimedia messages for communication by an individual to one or more peers.